


Champagne From a Paper Cup

by sorrywhatever



Category: Arrow (TV 2012)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - College/University, F/M, Roommates, Smoaking Billionaires if you squint, Tommy Merlyn is Alive, UST, flommy
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-03-12
Updated: 2015-03-19
Packaged: 2018-03-17 11:30:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,163
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3527732
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sorrywhatever/pseuds/sorrywhatever
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Felicity is a 19 year old senior at MIT when a housing glitch pairs her up to room with Tommy Merlyn, a 21 year old senior at Harvard. A little Flommy, a little Olicity, a lot of tension and maybe even some Smoaking Billionaires if you squint.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Ok everyone, I'm trying my hand at a multi-chapter fic this time. I wrote this first chapter a long time ago, but didn't really have the courage worked up to post until yesterday's success with my other story. The beginning might be a little rough, but I think I'm hitting a writing groove. I have big plans for this one. Let me know what you think. :)

By the time Felicity had landed, grabbed her bags and a taxi and made it to the registration office to get her housing assignment, it was closing time. The clock read 5:02 pm, and not wanting to be rude but also desperately NOT wanting to have to find a hotel to sleep in for the night, she banged on the door and crossed her fingers that someone would take pity on her and give her the address to her student apartment and her keys. 

Her flight had been delayed by 2 hours, not due to any weather troubles since the weather from Las Vegas to Boston was always fine in the summer. Something mechanical… that she didn’t really want to think about too much. It had been a long day, really just a long summer, and she was itching to get settled back into the routine of school and classes and burying her head in code. 

She rarely saw eye to eye with her mom, and while the summer hadn’t been full of conflict, it was emotionally draining to constantly deflect her questions about boys and friends and her “frumpy” wardrobe. So, in the manner she’d perfected in high school, Felicity kept her head down and worked extra hours at her summer job -- consulting for a security company that catered to Las Vegas’ elite. 

Now she was back in Boston and thank GOD someone was going to answer her knocks.

“Yes?” asked the kindly looking middle aged woman who opened the door.

“Um, hi, I’m Felicity Smoak and I’m so sorry I’m late. I rushed here as fast as I could. I was supposed to pick up my housing assignment from MIT for my Off Campus apartment. I think it will be really quick, I just need to grab my keys from you,” Felicity plowed through her monologue as quickly and kindly as she could. Her cab was still idling at the curb and she desperately hoped this whole ordeal didn’t end up costing her all the money she’d saved up over the summer in cab fare.

“Ok, I was just headed out, but let me check the log really quickly,” the woman opened the door wide to let her in and Felicity signaled to the cabbie that she’d just be a minute.

The woman flicked through her computer screen and pulled up Felicity’s housing information.  
“Ok, what was the last name again?”

“Smoak, spelled S-M-O-A-K,” Felicity offered.

“Oh, ok here it is. I think. Um, it has the first name wrong though, but it’s the only Smoak. It looks like you requested housing through the multi-school apartment finder. We have you placed in a two bedroom in Cambridge. It looks like your roommate checked in earlier this afternoon. Thomas Merlyn. He picked up his keys, so let me just grab your set.” 

The woman stood to go grab the keys, and Felicity’s brain finally caught up with what she’d heard. Shaking off her confusion she called out, “Wait, did you say ‘Thomas’? But, I’m sure that’s a mistake. Aren’t the student apartments always same sex? Shouldn’t I have a female roommate?”

With her head tilted, the woman made her way back to the computers, clicking through, till she saw the housing order. “Hmmm, well, yes, you should have been put with another girl. But the initial order that was put in for you in the system says it’s for a ‘Felm’ Smoak? I’m not sure what that is? I guess the system wasn’t sure either, so you were sorted into the male housing group.”

Felicity came behind the desk to look over the woman’s shoulder. Letting out a deep sigh, Felicity saw where the glitch had happened. Somehow her first and middle name had been fused into some strange, sexless name. Felm. Blerg! Why do things like this always happen to her? To be honest, she should have taken time over the summer to hack into their system and check that everything was set up to her satisfaction, but she’d been busy at home and, stupidly, trusted that something as basic as a housing request couldn’t be messed up. 

Looking over the form, Felicity saw the details of her new roommate. Thomas Merlyn, age 21, senior at Harvard. Hmmmmm. Well, they’ll have to sort this out, but seeing as it was after 5 p.m. on Friday it very likely would have to wait until Monday.

Huffing another deep sigh, Felicity walked back to the front of the woman’s desk. “Well, ok, I’m guessing you don’t have a lot of options for me since it’s already after closing time on Friday. Right?” Felicity asked, hopeful that the woman would disagree and magically produce keys to another apartment without 21 year old male roommates.

“Yeah, we were really booked up this year. It was a real squeeze getting everyone in, and honestly we still have a few students on the waitlist. We have apartments opening up for them, we think, but some of them might not get moved in until after the semester starts. I can add you to the waitlist, but until Monday there is absolutely nothing I can do to help you.” With a look of sympathy, the woman stood to gather Felicity’s keys as she handed over the envelope with all the housing details. 

Felicity thanked her and headed back to her waiting taxi. Well, this should be interesting. Although, given how well she’d fit in with her peers in the dorms at MIT, she couldn’t possibly have a worse time of it with this Thomas Merlyn. If only she hadn’t already skipped ahead so much in school, it might have made it easier for her to fit in. Sure, college had been different from high school, and she definitely had more academic competition at MIT, but even here she was faced with a lot of petty junk that she couldn’t bring herself to care about. If she had to leave her housing up to the fates instead of living with a friend, she supposed something like this was bound to happen. How bad could it be, anyway?

Felicity stopped her musings as the cab pulled up in front of the apartment building. She had to admit, it looked a lot nicer than the dorms she’d been in for the last two years. The brownstone sat midway up a hill and as she paid the driver and wheeled her bags to the door she could see that it housed four separate apartments. Should be nice. Cozy even. And it had to be quieter than the dorms. She slid her key into the front door and took a fortifying breath before beginning to drag her bags up the stairs. Here goes nothing.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Felicity is a 19 year old senior at MIT when a housing glitch pairs her up to room with Tommy Merlyn, a 21 year old senior at Harvard. A little Flommy, a little Olicity, a lot of tension and maybe even some Smoaking Billionaires if you squint.
> 
> Tommy and Felicity meet for the first time.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is my first try at something longer. It have it mapped out now and this will probably be 10-12 chapters long. I feel like this is still mostly set up to the good stuff that happens in the next chapter, and hopefully from there on out. Pacing and writing more than 2000 words at a time are both things I'm working on right now, but I also have another, slightly longer Flommy piece that I hope to post this weekend. So hopefully that will tide you over if you love Tommy Merlyn and Felicity Smoak like I do. I'm trying to post weekly and hopefully it won't be too much longer til we get to the good stuff.

Felicity stood outside the door of her new, temporary, apartment with the key in her hand when she paused. 

“What is the protocol here? I mean, technically I live here, at least until Monday. But I probably shouldn’t just barge in, right?” she murmered to herself.

She lifted her hand to knock on the door when suddenly it whooshed open in front of her. 

So that’s how Felicity Smoak met Tommy Merlyn. She was standing looking a little surprised and a little disheveled from her long travel day, and he, damn him, was looking handsome and freshly showered and _wow are those dimples_ Felicity thought as he flashed her a charming, if confused, smile.

“Uhhhhhh,” Felicity began, her normally over-exhuberant gift for gab (or at least babbling) temporarily leaving her. Because if this was her new roommate? Damn, he really wasn’t a boy. He was a man. This suddenly felt like it was going to be 1000 percent more awkward than she’d first imagined. Not that she’d ever really imagined living with a man at all. Not really. 

“Can I help you?” Tommy asked, clearly confused but still kind. “Usually I have to GO to the clubs first before I get the beautiful blonde to come back to my place,” he quipped, and yeah, ok, a charming but flimsy line is something Felicity could deal with. 

“Yes,” she said, her eyebrows high in challenge and her temporary language loss a thing of the past. “I am actually your new roommate. I just got back from picking up my keys. And you, I assume, are Thomas Merlyn.”

Now Tommy was the one whose eyebrows rose upwards. “Roommate huh? I gotta say, you are the prettiest ‘Felm’ I’ve ever met,” he said, referencing the botched name that had appeared on their housing forms.

“It’s Felicity, actually. Felicity Smoak. The, uh, ‘Felm’ thing was just, sort of a ‘Tuttle/Buttle’ situation.”

“Huh?” Tommy asked, clearly confused by both the situation and her obscure reference.

“‘Tuttle/Buttle’? _Brazil_? Terry Gilliam’s masterpiece?” She could see that she was getting nowhere with her geeky film knowledge so she tried a new tact.

“What I mean is, it was a mix up in the system. A glitch. The start of my first name fused with my middle initial and…. ‘Felm’ I guess...” Felicity trailed off, not really sure where to go from there.

Tommy broke the silence by gesturing behind here. “Are those all your bags?” he asked.

“Oh, yeah, yep. But don’t worry, I don’t plan on unpacking them. I mean, eventually I will unpack and settle in somewhere, but it won’t be here,” she took a deep breath, trying to sideline the oncoming babble. 

“What I’m trying to say is, I’ll call the housing office on Monday and have them arrange to move me. You know, in with a female roommate. But it was too late today, so I will be staying here for a few days. I hope that’s ok?” she finished, a little uncertain. This felt like very unchartered territory.

“Ok,” he said, smiling and nodding. At least he looks amused and not irritated, she thought. 

“Well, can I help you carry them inside? I was just heading out to meet some buddies, but I can be a little late. Have to give you the grand tour of your humble abode, right?”

At her uncertain look, Tommy stepped out of the apartment and gently laid his hand on her shoulder. “It’ll be ok, Felicity, I promise I don’t bite. And even I can behave myself for two days.”

She smiled at him and bent to grab a bag while he gathered her other two suitcases.

“People call me Tommy, by the way.”

“Well Tommy, lead the way.”

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

After a brief tour of the apartment, Felicity decided the best features were the storage in the bathroom (cause yeah, living out of a shower caddy for two years had kinda sucked) and the view from her window. She was at tree level and there was a beautiful willow tree right outside. Only, it wasn’t really her view, right? Right. Don’t get too attached, surely the next place they find for her will be just as nice.

Felicity turned from her musings of how beautiful Boston looked like this, painted pink and golden by the early evening sun, when she heard Tommy at the door.

“So, I actually do have somewhere to go. I’m meeting friends to help them unpack and then heading to RISE later,” he told her, naming a popular nightclub. “Do you want to join us? I could swing back by and get you on our way over there” Tommy suggested kindly.

“Oh, no. Thanks though! I’m not 21, so…”

Felicity saw Tommy’s eyebrows migrate north yet again, and while it wasn’t a bad look, she was starting to feel like this whole thing was just a little too ridiculous, even for her.

“I’m 19. I’ll be 20 in November. I finished high school early. I grew up in Las Vegas, and have you been to Las Vegas?” she asked, and when he nodded she continued on, “well, it’s definitely worse to live there. I needed out. MIT was my escape plan.”

“Wait, MIT? You don’t go to Harvard? I wondered why I hadn’t seen you before.”

Felicity smiled, wondering why on Earth he would have noticed her anyway, but just said, “I guess that the mystery and appeal of the multi-school housing system. Since we’re both seniors and students I guess they figured our life styles can’t be that different, right? Study. Eat. Sleep. Repeat.”

Tommy didn’t have anything to say to that, because if he was being honest, Felicity probably had no idea what it would be like to room with him. His hours were a little unconventional for, well, most people. And she was clearly a hard worker to have gotten so far at such a young age. But 19, damn! 

“Ok, well, I do really need to get going,” Tommy gestured towards the door and then stopped to show her a stack of fast food menus on the counter. “I found these in the drawer. I’ll probably eat when I’m out, but it might help you get aquinted with what the neighborhood has to offer.”

“Ooooh, I could kill for some good Indian food,” she said, looking over one of the more appealing looking menus.

“I expect a full report on your food discoveries in the morning,” Tommy said with a wink as he closed the door behind him, shouting, “Don’t wait up!”

Alone for the first time in her first apartment, Felicity suddenly didn’t know what to do. She had looked forward to have her own place since, well since practically forever. Sure, growing up with her mom working the long, strange hours required of a cocktail waitress on the strip wasn’t unlike living alone, but this was a space that was hers. Or, well, theirs. For the next two days. After that, who knows, but she might as well make the most of it.

Felicity took a few minutes to hook her laptop up to the wifi and scrolled through Netflix while navagating the website for that Indian place that looked so promising. She placed her order and settled on the couch, ready to relax and watch one of her favorite episodes of Doctor Who. 

Her food arrived forty minutes later, which she considered pretty good for a Friday night at 7 p.m. and Felicity decided to fire up the next episode. She moaned quietly to herself at the deliciousness of the saag paneer and tiki masala. This restaurant was definitely a keeper. 

After the episode ended, Felicity grabbed her tablet, curiosity about her new roomie finally getting the better of her. She promised herself she’d only Google him, ‘cause googling isn’t that intrusive, right? There were definitely WAY more thorough searches she could run, but she was just looking for a few public, easy to find details. Because Felicity had a strange feeling that she’d met him before.

And that’s how Felicity came to realize that Tommy Merlyn, her Tommy Merlyn, was, in fact, THE Tommy Merlyn. Well, ok, she obviously hadn’t remembered his name, but once she saw all the articles about Merlyn Global and the “billionaire playboy about town” stuff, she realized that she definitely should have recognized him. Because she’d definitely read about him before. 

But WHY, was her next question. Because it made absolutely no sense that a BILLIONAIRE would choose to use the completely random student housing finder that she, a scholarship student, had used. Couldn’t his daddy just hook him up with a million dollar penthouse to bring his super model girlfriend-of-the-week home to?

So, ok, he is definitely a puzzle for her to solve. A riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma. Or something. 

She had to find something else to do to stop herself from running a bunch of not so legal and definitely not so friendly searches on Tommy. She might not be planning on staying here for long, but that still didn’t mean she thought it was ok to invade his privacy. At least not more than the papparrazzi and a slew of tabloid journalists already had.

She decided to distract herself with some basic unpacking, just throwing her already laundered sheets on the bed and digging out her basic toilettries and other essentials. And since she wasn’t in the dorms anymore, she’d have to see to food. A quick search of the kitchen revealed that Tommy hadn’t done any shopping, so she placed a quick grocery delivery order online to be delivered the next morning.

That done, she felt like she should try to relax, but sleep seemed unlikely. It was after 9 in Boston, which was only 6 p.m. Las Vegas time. Sure, she’d been up early to get to the airport, and it had been a long day, but she just felt restless. 

Out of good ideas, she decided to settle in on the couch to try to finish up a complicated coding project she’d been working on all summer. She plugged her earbuds in to the computer so she could listen to music and got down to work. She was so in the zone that she barely noticed the hours ticking by. 

At some point she must have finally gotten tired, because she didn’t remember falling asleep on the couch, but suddenly she was awakened by the sounds of giggling and what was maybe a stampede of drunken elephants in the kitchen. Ok, no, not that. The voices, which were clearly NOT trying to be quiet, sounded like they belonged to Tommy and some girl, so, yeah, it seemed his reputation wasn’t too far off from the truth. Of course, it wasn’t fair to judge, she barely knew him. Maybe that was his girlfriend. But either way they sounded drunk. 

She sat up on the couch, straightening her glasses that had slipped down her nose, and turned in time to see Tommy push the woman against the wall in a heated kiss. The way his hands were roaming, Felicity was worried she was about to get WAY more of a show than she wanted. She quickly stood up, trying to make noise and attract their attention.

“Felicity?” she heard Tommy’s voice call out. “Um, sorry. Did we wake you?”

“Oh, no, no, it’s fine. I didn’t actually mean to fall asleep on the couch. Not when there’s a perfectly good bed in there. So, I’ll just…. yep,” she murmured, pointing to her room.

Safely behind her door, she took a fortifying breath before changing quickly into her pjs and grabbing her toothbrush. Once she was sure the coast was clear she hurried to the bathroom to get ready for the night. There were definitely…. noises coming out of Tommy’s room. Yep, she was just gonna try to block that out and maybe dig out the ear plugs she packed for traveling. 

Back in her room, she tried sleeping again, but found it surprisingly hard to settle in to sleep. She couldn’t get the image of Tommy and his rumpled shirt and kiss-swollen lips out of her head.

**Author's Note:**

> Yeah, I'm terrible at titles. So I'm stealing mine from a Death Cab for Cutie song. Seems appropriate for a college-verse AU though, don't you think?


End file.
